Effect of High-Speed Impact Compression on Natural Aging and Subsequent Artificial Aging of a 6061 Aluminum Alloy

• Published in: MATERIALS TRANSACTIONS Vol. 57; no. 8; pp. 1282 - 1286
• Main Authors: Ogura, Tomo, Horikawa, Keitaro, Kitani, Yuki, Miara, Mami, Kim, SeongNyeong, Kobayashi, Equo, Sato, Tatsuo, Kobayashi, Hidetoshi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sendai The Japan Institute of Metals and Materials 01-01-2016; Japan Science and Technology Agency
• Subjects: age-hardening; Aging (artificial); Aging (natural); Aluminum base alloys; aluminum-magnesium-silicon alloy; Compressing; Differential scanning calorimetry; High speed; high-speed deformation; point defects; Precipitates; Transmission electron microscopy; vacancy
• ISSN: 1345-9678; 1347-5320
• DOI: 10.2320/matertrans.L-M2016819

The effect of high-speed impact compression on natural aging and subsequent artificial aging of a 6061 aluminum alloy was investigated using Micro-Vickers hardness test, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analysis and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The suppression of natural age-hardening was clearly seen in the alloy with high-speed impact compression. TEM observation showed that fine β” precipitates was formed during artificial aging even after high-speed impact compression and natural aging. Maximum hardness of the peak-aged alloys with high-speed compression was almost the same as that without natural aging, showing that negative effect of two step aging was almost overcome by high-speed impact compression.